What's up with the internet in Russia? When will it "go away"? Let me tell you what I learned

Meme Factory

That’s why we have this news at the level of memes. And our editorial team sometimes presents it more as a joke. What are the headlines worth:

Russia considers email, smartphones, and satellite internet to be «security threats»

or:

Roskomnadzor lacks the capacity to filter Russian internet traffic .

I even have my own «favorite news» on this topic from the Russian-type philosopher Alexander Dugin. He recently proposed cutting off the Internet in Russia seasonally: for six months. As he stated, it is better to turn off the Internet in the spring, when «people will start walking, meeting, communicating, visiting cafes and shops, making new acquaintances, living a real human life.» And turn it back on in late autumn.

This is, of course, a masterpiece of thought. It’s not for nothing that Dugin is called a philosopher in the Russian Federation. The IT people there should especially appreciate him — you can go on vacation for six months.

Concerns of «conscious» Russians

For several months now, Russian «liberal» communities have been literally panicking that the Internet in Russia will soon become a localized network with «white lists,» with Mach becoming the main messenger and Vkontakte the main social network. That is why they are urging Russians to urgently install a VPN if any of them have not installed one (I will return to the VPN issue a little later, and I think I will disappoint some people).

The main hype is around Telegram. Allegedly, for the vast majority of Russians, it already works with noticeable slowdowns and glitches. And various media outlets even publish the final date for the alleged complete shutdown of the telegram in the Russian Federation — April 1. Whether this will happen or whether this is a kind of PR campaign for Telegram (like the messenger is so independent that it does not obey the Kremlin’s orders) is unknown. I personally believe that this is a PR campaign created by the special services of an unfriendly state in order to emphasize the «protest nature» of TG, leave it to work as an agent network of international influence in «Western countries», and put the entire domestic Russian audience on the domestic Max.

Well, I don’t believe that Pavel Durov is indirectly involved with Russian spies. It doesn’t fit at all.

The fattest

But for me, as they say, the most important thing in this topic is not even the potential disconnection of the TG. Interesting news began when residents of both the largest cities of the Russian Federation and remote regions of the federation began to complain that their Internet, both mobile and fixed, periodically completely disappears. This led to chaos in the work of Moscow taxi services, in people’s navigation around the cities in general, etc. Time to dig out paper maps and «guides» in grandfather’s cabinets and garages!

The main reason cited by the Russian authorities is security measures against Ukrainian UAVs, which use mobile Internet networks for navigation. I think this is only partly true, because, for example, our UAVs have not yet reached Kamchatka, where the Internet also fails.

A friend of mine, who is quite knowledgeable about how the global network works as a whole, says that the main reason may lie elsewhere. His theory is that after the elimination of Ali Khamenei in Iran, who was being monitored via the Internet, Putin got scared and decided to play it safe.

Access to the Internet, along with hacked surveillance cameras and FPV drones with SIM cards from Russian social networks, opens up extraordinary opportunities, both for preparation and for conducting targeted and highly influential operations.

Therefore, perhaps a sudden panic attack began in the Kremlin.

But if you dig into the topic further, it turns out that Russia has long been preparing for, if not a complete shutdown, then for a severe restriction of access to Internet resources.

As my reliable sources in the telecommunications market tell me, everything is ready in the Russian Federation and «blocking the main information distributors — a filter on autonomous systems — will be implemented in 15 minutes.»

The Russian Federation has good control over backbone networks, both state and commercial, and controls international traffic flows. And despite the occasional news that DPI systems (traffic inspection systems) are allegedly unable to cope with the load, the Russian network control system has already practiced various blocking scenarios.

What’s stopping you from pressing the button today and making a «cheburnet»?

I think that the point is not in the potential dissatisfaction of people due to such actions. Discontent and protests in the Russian Federation are well controlled. This is a smaller risk. The much greater risk is money. If, for example, YouTube is completely cut off, telecom providers will miss out on the significant profits they receive for delivering the image. «Blocking is primarily a shot in the foot,» says my interlocutor. So we can assume that large telecom companies, such as MTS and Beeline, do not really support cutting off the global Internet.

Ultimately, the launch of Operation Cheburnet will lead to the artificial cutting off of the Russian Federation from global innovations, from large language models, useful systems, services, applications, etc.

Whether this can happen under these circumstances is unknown. What will win: panic in the Kremlin or the economic consequences?

We’ll see. I think the next month will tell us.

And for VPN: it seems that this crutch will not work in the Russian Federation. As my friend says, for the past five years, Putin’s government has been working on studying the operation of VPNs, and in the past two years, commercial services have already been well controlled. They have learned to understand how such systems work. Therefore, I think that the availability of TG via VPN is by royal will. For now.